The Origin Story of a Natural Minimalist

I didn't know I was a minimalist until my wife told me I was. In fact, I didn't even know that minimalism was a thing until my wife told me. I've just always been a natural minimalist.

I can trace the roots of my minimalism back along my family tree and find the seed in growing up poor. Being impoverished meant my parents had no money to waste on buying me things that I didn't need. Hell, occasionally, they didn't have the money to buy me things that I did need (I'll never forget the winter in fourth grade during which I spent all my recesses inside because I didn't have coat). This spartan childhood seemed to stayed with me and helped shape my minimalist nature.

Another key factor, I think, in my being a minimalist is that I have had a tough time with my career. I started out after undergrad in a job in which I got to travel all over the US, which was great, until it wasn't. A few months of 70+ hour work days and a mugging at gunpoint later, and I quit that job.

I bounced around a couple of part-time gigs until I landed in the field of higher education. I worked doing recruiting and then became an advisor and that was great  -- until it wasn't. The economy recovered from the Great Recession and people went back to work, which meant they weren't going to school. This meant a drop in enrollment and downsizing and again I found myself unemployed.

It's a traumatic event, being let go from a job when you've done nothing wrong. It's even more traumatic when you can't seem to find another job that matches your goals. Again, I bounced around a few part-time or near-full-time jobs. I ate through my savings, but only very slowly. I was under-employed or unemployed but able to afford my rent and other bills much longer than many other people would have been able to in the same situation because of my innate minimalist nature.

When I was working, it was easy to save money because I didn't buy things that I didn't need. My savings saw me through my graduate degree and lasted long enough for me to obtain my next full-time position that matched my goals.

I find satisfaction in my life through experiences, and activities and not through things. For example, I was satisfied with my old box set television even while everyone around me was buying up the latest LCD flatscreens. I didn't mind that my car had over 100K miles on it and didn't look the best. It still ran fine and that was after all the purpose of it. I don't needs stuff. I find happiness elsewhere.

I'm 33 now and have a steady job, a good education, no debt and money in the bank. My wife and I are firmly in the middle class with our combined incomes. I still don't buy things I don't need.

I guess growing up poor and then becoming middle class could have gone one of two ways in terms of buying stuff. I was either going to be as I am now, and continue being someone that just doesn't buy things, or, since I finally had the money to indulge, I was going to become a spendthrift lunatic. Luckily, I followed the minimalist route.

It wasn't until my wife dove into the deep end of the minimalism movement, a necessity when we moved in together into my one-bedroom apartment, that I learned about all of these minimalist pundits that were acting like they discovered something new but were actually just discovering something that I'd been living my entire life. So, I guess what I'm saying is that I probably have a few things that I can contribute to the discussion on minimalism, and that's the reason why I co-created Minimalism and More.

I hope that as my wife and I post more of our ideas, suggestions, and questions, that Minimalism and More becomes a place with a dynamic discussion on what minimalism is, other philosophies that align with minimalism (I'm particularly excited to begin a conversation on anti-consumerism) and how we these interconnected philosophies can lead us all to happier and healthier lives and improve the societies in which we live.

Regards,

-D

My Experience with Marie Kondo's "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up"

 My Experience with Marie Kondo's "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up"

I read Marie Kondo's "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up" as a part of my search for writing on Minimalism. What I didn't realize was that I would be undertaking one of my most important personal experiments in years

I approached this book with a weary decluttering heart and a totally skeptical attitude but it turned out... that I LOVE this book. There is a good reason that it is an international best-seller.

I had anticipated a poorly written book thoughtlessly thrown together in an attempt to take advantage of a trendy topic. After all, most tomes on similar topics have barely held my attention, let alone held any advice which I found helpful.

I have never been so happy to be utterly and completely wrong! After reading the first few chapters, I was hooked. I quickly committed to throwing myself down the rabbit-hole and giving Marie Kondo's system for decluttering a try. I can tell you, I have no regrets.

Now, I won't detail Marie Kondo's method for you here. There are plenty of other internet resources willing to attempt condensing her thoughtfully written experiences and unique take on people's relationship with their stuff. But I will tell you my experience with her book and stress that it is absolutely worth reading for yourself. This book can provide insights that no cliff-noted version can hope to achieve. Each time I read the quick and easy to read book, I find new insights and new messages that I can apply to where I am currently on my own "stuff" journey.

With that said, here is my story. Before reading the book, I'd been thoughtfully purging stuff from my life since marrying my lovely spouse about a year earlier. The challenge I faced in this task was trying to condense two complete adult households worth of stuff into a small one-bedroom apartment.

Now I feel that I should preface this by stating that my husband and I were both 30 when we married. So, we had two of almost everything. Two mattresses. Two couches. Two sets of pots/pans/kitchen equipment. Two TV's. Etc. But even with all of that, by modern American standards, we both owned very little "stuff." I had moved around a lot in my adult life to that date, so I hadn't accumulated much that wasn't functional/easy to move. My dear spouse who has lived in the same city since birth and the same apartment for eight years is just a natural born minimalist. (Sorry reader, this guy is taken!) It is one of the many things that I love dearly about my spouse. It almost never occurs to him to buy something he doesn't truly need - awesome.

While I definitely have more stuff than my husband, I lump 50% of my stuff in the maker's-stuff category. I'm an artist and so I have accumulated the tools and supplies natural to that vocation.

Fast-forward one year into our marriage. A LOT of stuff had been culled. (My trips to nonprofit donation drop-off sites were so common they began recognizing my car as I pulled up.) We'd decided on the biggest and hardest stuff like whose TV, mattress, etc. to keep and whose to ditch. But I had gotten to the point with my task were I was having trouble determining what was worth keeping and what was unnecessary.

By this point, we and our stuff fit in the apartment, but something just felt... wrong. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Yes the cupboards were all full but nothing was falling on our heads in an avalanche when we opened them. We could usually find what we were looking for and certainly nobody was going to nominate us for the TV show Hoarders.

To those of you who have done this "combining households" thing before, yes, my husband and I each had a few precious objects from our single-days that annoyed the crap out of each other. But he had mostly come to grips with living in the same space as my large-and-in-charge knockoff Chinese contemporary-art painting and I had mostly begun to ignore his female-shop-mannequin turned hat-stand (just the top half of the mannequin-- yikes.) It wasn't those objects which were causing me trouble.

I just couldn't put my finger on why something about our stuff situation felt "off." In an attempt to resolve the feeling, I had begun to give an enormous amount of thought and research to clever storage methods and had employed them in several areas of the apartment. I thought maybe my feeling of unease could be resolved if our storage looked prettier. Or maybe if we "created more space" with some new storage techniques. But still, something was not right.

Then Marie Kondo lifted the cloud I was living under in just a few sweet and endearing chapters. I wasn't crazy! MK understood. She mirrored back to me my own anxiety about my stuff while assuring me that not only was I not alone, but she could and would help to solve my problem. Cue the choir of angels singing the Hallelujah Chorus, people!

As I stated earlier, I won't detail Marie Kondo's method for you here. But I will say that I employed her technique with one personal deviation which I may write about at a future date. It took around five months for me to get through everything and involved many more trips to the non-profit resale donation location. But to my surprise, I really did enjoy the process thanks to MK.

I have been filled with so much more joy and peace in our living space. We have less clutter and have achieved a stuff/life balance in our space. We have exactly what we need and nothing that doesn't bring joy into our life. Most amazingly, as a result of following MK's method, unnecessary stuff has not found its way back into our apartment even more than a year later. I now find myself more able to focus on what is important in my life and find the time and energy to dedicate to those things.

I am grateful to Marie Kondo for sharing her wisdom and hope that you benefit as much as I have.

If you are an MK fan-girl like me, or have another guru you'd like to recommend, let us know in the comments below!

-L